Identical (17 page)

Tim very briefly covered Mo’s hand with his own. You live with somebody, peaceably, dreaming beside each other, sharing meals, making a family, but there seems no special excitement to it, even though you know, as Tim did, that you’re living with a person of exceptional kindness. And then she’s gone and the depth of the loss almost surpasses understanding, even when you realize you’re also mourning your loneliness, and the inevitability of it.

Judge Lands came on the bench then and they both stood. The clerk called Kronon’s case first.

Tooley and Horgan strolled forward from their respective tables, two stout fellows looking a bit like a bride and groom as they met in the center of the courtroom before Tooley preceded Ray to the podium.

Du Bois was one of those judges who knew his business and didn’t waste time. As a cop, Tim had never been all that keen about judges. Many just seemed to get in the way, with a fair number of them thinking the whole case was about them. Whoever went to a baseball game to see the umpire?

At the front of the courtroom, the lawyers bickered while Lands kept control. A couple of times, Mo was mentioned and he popped up beside Tim. Eventually, the judge asked Mo to step forward. He moved toward the bench stiffly. He’d been a basketball player years ago, as Tim recalled, and he was clearly having trouble with his knees.

When court broke, Tim made his way up to the defense table where Tooley, as usual, had his hands full with Hal. Kronon had realized that Paul and his team had gotten exactly what they wanted. TV cameramen were barred from any other part of the courthouse, except the rotunda. By going down there to give his prints, Gianis would be able to mount a show for the evening news.

“Fucking publicity stunt,” Kronon said.

“Hal,” Tooley said, “he was going to get to do this in front of the cameras, no matter what. It’s a public proceeding.”

Horgan’s associate came by and asked if they wanted to witness the fingerprinting, and the three made their way downstairs. Dickerman had set up shop on the stone ledge that decorated the Temple’s central hallway. At Dickerman’s instruction, Paul had gone off to wash his hands, and he returned now, striding through the lobby, several steps in front of Ray Horgan, as the xenon beams of the cameras came on simultaneously, flooding the hallway with their glare. Gianis slid off his suit coat, handing it to one of the young campaign aides, then removed his cuff links and rolled up his sleeves.

In Tim’s day, Mo would have taken the prints by inking Paul’s fingers and palms and rolling them on a piece of stiff paper called a ten-card. That remained the procedure in most police stations, but Mo preferred a digital impression, called “live scan.” For his private consulting business, Mo owned his own equipment, and he had his assistant, probably a grad student from the U where Mo taught, bring the metal jumpkit from which Dickerman extracted the scanner, which was about the size of an adding machine. Mo connected the scanner to his laptop and took several different versions of Paul’s prints. The first was a four-finger slap, then Dickerman bore down on each of Paul’s fingers, rolling it across a white band beneath the scanner’s platen. The images popped up immediately on his computer screen, as the camera guys fought each other for close-ups. For safety’s sake, Mo also took impressions on paper, using one of the new inkless pads.

Hal had seen enough and drew both Tim and Tooley aside.

“He’ll never match anything,” Kronon said about Paul. “His prints won’t be anywhere in that room. That’s why he’s making such a show of it. He looks like a vaudeville magician rolling up his sleeves.”

“That was always the risk, Hal,” Tooley told him.

“We should withdraw the motion.”

“It was just granted. We can’t withdraw it.”

“He won’t match. And because he doesn’t match, and the DNA is no better than one in a hundred, his asshole buddy, Du Bois, will then deny the motion for the DNA, too. I want the goddamned DNA.”

Accustomed to Hal’s pique and the irrationality that was often part of it, Tooley remained silent for a second, before venturing the obvious.

“It means something, Hal, if his fingerprints aren’t there. We can’t pretend it doesn’t.”

“It doesn’t mean crap.”

Tooley rolled his eyes at Tim and announced he was going back to his office. Hal’s Bentley had rolled to the curb. Alone, Tim returned to witness the last of the fingerprinting, but Gianis was already slipping his cuff links back in. Fitting the scanner into the foam cushion inside the metal case, Mo caught sight of Tim and gestured for him to wait. It was another ten minutes because several of the reporters wanted to talk to Mo, too. By the time Dickerman came over, Tim and he were alone in the marble hall.

“I meant to tell you before,” Mo said, “but I got distracted about Sally. You’re gonna have to get your rear end back out to Greenwood County.”

“And why’s that?”

“I’m gonna need Cass’s fingerprints, too, and they weren’t in that mess you brought over yesterday.”

“Cass?” Tim asked. “I thought he has different fingerprints from Paul.”

“No, that’s true. But telling them apart in a situation like this-it’s not that easy.” As he often did, Mo reverted to a lecture, explaining that most of what showed up in twins’ fingerprints, the basic skin patterns of loops and whorls and ridges, was identical, the product of shared genes. Subtle variations emerged during development, when the fetus touched the uterine wall, or itself, causing differences in what print examiners called ‘the minutiae,’ the areas where skin ridges ended or branched or ran together.

“Don’t misunderstand,” said Mo. “If I give any decent examiner ten-cards from Paul and Cass Gianis, they’d see enough to distinguish. But you know better than I do that latents at a crime scene don’t come in ten-finger sets. You get partials, a couple of fingers, whatever. You understand all that. And with, say, a partial print, you may not be able to tell which twin it’s from.

“So you know, the best way to do this kind of comparison is to start out with the ten-card from each man and isolate the differing points. When I didn’t get Cass’s prints from Greenwood, I called Tooley to get him to call the PA’s office. In the meantime, he sent over Cass’s intake prints from Hillcrest, which I guess he got when he subpoenaed Cass’s file for the pardon and parole hearing. It’s a laser copy. High-res, but it’s a copy. Nobody can testify from that. Which is why I need you to go back out to Greenwood and make them find Cass’s ten-card.”

“Got it, Boss,” said Tim. He thought calling Mo ‘Boss’ might get a smile, but Dickerman stood there, looking nettled instead. Something was weighing on him.

“There’s one other thing,” said Mo. “Which maybe you can help me figure out.”

Tim shrugged, feeling somewhat flattered. Generally, Mo didn’t think he needed any help figuring out anything.

“When I got that copy of Cass’s prints,” said Mo, “I decided I could use them at least to do some prep. I’ve got to go over to Italy for a week to give a lecture-”

“Poor soul,” said Tim.

“Yeah, it’s tough. But I wanted to get a head start. I had Logan Boerkle’s report from 1983 where he identified Cass’s prints. I figured I’d see what part of each print Logan had relied on, and then when I got Paul’s card today, I’d have someplace to start the comparison.”

Tim nodded. It made sense.

“Logan was barely sober in those days.” Logan had been the head of the fingerprint lab here whom Mo had displaced. He got hired in Greenwood County, but that was like going from the big leagues to A ball.

“Logan’s the one who died of exposure in his own cabin, right?” Tim asked.

“Right. He had some place up in Skageon with just an outhouse and he got drunk and went out to take a piss, and passed out in the snow and died there. Back in ’83, when he made Cass’s prints, he was already a shambles. Most of the time when he showed up for work, he didn’t know one end of a microscope from another. And damn me, when I start comparing his report and the lifts from the scene to the prints I got from Hillcrest-they don’t match. Close. Very very close. But in several cases, they display just the kind of minute differences you’d expect with a twin.”

“Which Logan missed?”

Mo hitched his shoulders. “Possibly.”

“So you’re telling me the wrong brother is in the can?”

“I’m telling you what I’m telling you.”

Tim considered this at some length, then shook his head.

“Paul Gianis is too smart to think he’d get away with that twice. He’s a former PA. The way he went strutting around that lobby-he knows his prints weren’t at the scene.”

“Or he thinks no examiner would bother to look again at the lifts identified as Cass’s in ’83,” said Mo. “Maybe Paul figures I’d confine my new examination to the unknowns. There’s plenty that would do it like that. But either way, I need Cass’s original prints. Maybe when I compare them with Paul’s, this will make more sense. Maybe I’ll see what Logan was talking about. But I’m buffaloed now.” He peered at Tim again.

“This stays right here,” Mo said. “I don’t want anybody hearing this, and then in two weeks thinking I’m a world-class bonehead.”

Tim agreed. He couldn’t make any more sense of this than Mo. They parted, joined in a weird compact, two old guys afraid they could be slipping.

Heather hadn’t moved out when Evon returned to the condo, last Sunday. She had opened a suitcase on their bed, but had gotten no further than that. In her nightgown, Heather was sitting on the covers in a butterfly pose, soles of her feet pressed together, her blonde hair flowing smoothly over her shoulders. She began weeping as soon as Evon appeared at the door to the room. Evon had no doubt that Heather had staged the whole thing, laid the case out and dressed herself in a casually revealing way.

‘You have to leave,’ Evon told her.

Heather begged, repeated her pledges of love, but ended up enraged. Evon couldn’t throw her out of her own home, she said. Heather was ignoring many facts-that Evon had paid every penny for the place, that the title was solely in Evon’s name and that Heather hadn’t contributed her share of the assessment for months. Evon had told her she had until next Saturday to go.

Now, on Saturday morning, Evon arrived at the condo, full of resolve. She knocked but of course Heather didn’t answer. When Evon tried her key, she found Heather had changed the locks. Evon hammered on the door for only a second, then called a locksmith and the head of the condo association. In the meantime, she went to her safe-deposit box to retrieve the deed to the place to establish ownership. Evon had the smith drill out the cylinder while Rhona, the association president, and her husband, Harry, both of whom lived next door, came into the hallway for a second to watch. She could hear Heather on the other side, threatening to call the police. When the drilling didn’t cease, Heather opened the door, just as the tradesman had bored through. Heather was in a negligee again and offered Evon both keys.

“I would have given them to you. All you had to do was ask.”

Evon didn’t bother responding. Heather would say anything at this point, no matter how obviously untrue. Evon left the locksmith at work on a new dead bolt, and drove to Morton’s and bought the biggest duffel bag they had in the store. Back at the condo, she started packing Heather’s stuff in front of her. Evon slammed Heather’s dresses, still on the hangers, into the bag, knowing that Heather, who treated every garment as if it were made of Venetian glass, could not bear the sight. When Evon was done, she took the duffel down to Heather’s car and hoisted it onto the hood. Heather followed her, weeping and screaming, which gave Evon the opportunity she needed. She flew up the stairs-she could still outrun most people she knew-and closed the new click-lock. Heather was now on the other side of the door. She phoned Evon inside more than forty times in a row. Evon answered once: “If you don’t go away, I will have no choice but to call the police.” Half an hour later, while Heather was still calling every five minutes, Evon opened the door to toss out Heather’s purse. Once the pounding and the texting and phone calls had ceased, once the woman was finally gone, Evon sat on the living room floor in the space that had been happily theirs and howled.

When Evon opened the door for the Sunday paper, Heather was asleep in the hall, still in her negligee, using her handbag as a pillow. Evon called mutual friends and watched from the window as the two guided Heather to their car across the street. One had her by the waist, one by the shoulders. Heather was hysterical and they were nodding at every word. Evon was able to do nothing all day but talk to Merrel and watch the Pro Bowl. She was right, she knew, had done what she had to. All she needed now was someone to explain all that to her heart.

She was not much better when she went to work Monday morning. The loss, the drama, the sleeplessness had hollowed her out, made her feel as if the only part of her left intact was her skin. The vast entry of ZP’s headquarters was five stories high, glass on three sides, with giant seamless sheets of taupe granite cladding the only wall, which contained the building’s central service corridor. There workers in gray jumpsuits were on a lift hanging a huge crimson heart of woven roses as a Valentine decoration. It was too much for Evon. She barely made it into her office before closing the door so she could cry privately at her desk. She was still blubbering when Mitra, her assistant, buzzed to say Tim Brodie was here. Evon had totally forgotten the appointment. Tooley had copied all the old police reports for Ray Horgan, then handed the file back to Tim, asking that Evon and he, the ones with law-enforcement training, review the materials to determine if there were other leads they should follow.

Now she blew her nose and went to her purse for makeup. She looked horrible in the mirror of her compact. Crying with her contacts in had left her red-eyed, and the inflamed ridges of her nose made her resemble Rudolph. Tim took one glance at her once he came through her door and asked, “What happened?”